Speaking with Jane Velez-Mitchell; Social Media Journalist, Activist & Author

Today I am SO EXCITED to be speaking with Jane Valez-Mitchell. Jane is the founder/editor of JaneUnChained News, a non-profit, social media news network reporting on animal rights, veganism, health and climate change. With more than 70 volunteer contributors around the world, JaneUnChained’s videos are seen by millions. JaneUnChained.com's daily vegan cooking show via facebook.com/JaneVelezMitchell features some of the best vegan chefs in the world. 

This series features conversations I conducted with individuals who have dedicated their work and lives to Vegan research, businesses, art, and society. This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media.

 

TRANSCRIPTION

*Please note, this is an automated transcription please excuse any typos or errors

 

[00:00:00] In this episode, I speak with social media journalist, activists and prolific author Jane Velez Mitchell. Key points addressed where Jane's endeavors with her nonprofit social media news site, an educational platform called Jane Unchained dot com. We also discussed her documentary titled Countdown to Year Zero and how its narrative uniquely links animal agriculture to climate change and action items one can take to participate in the cessation of the ecological crisis the world is facing. Stay tuned for my fascinating talk with Jane Velez Mitchell.

 

[00:00:43] My name is Patricia Kathleen. And this series features interviews and conversations I conduct with experts from food and fashion to tech and agriculture, from medicine and science to health and humanitarian arenas. The dialog captured here is part of our ongoing effort to host transparent and honest rhetoric. For those of you who, like myself, find great value in hearing the expertize and opinions of individuals who have dedicated their work and lives to their ideals. If you're enjoying these podcasts, be sure to check out our subsequent series that dove deep into specific areas such as founders and entrepreneurs. Fasting and roundtable topics they can be found on our Web site. Patricia Kathleen Dot, where you can also join our newsletter. You can also subscribe to all of our series on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Pod Bean and YouTube. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation.

 

[00:01:40] Hi, everyone, and welcome back. I'm your host, Patricia. And today I am elated to be sitting down with Jane Velez Mitchell. Jane is a social media journalist, activist and author.

 

[00:01:49] You can find out more regarding everything that she does, as well as what we speak about today on her Web site. Jane, unchain dot com. That is J and E, you n c h h i n e d dot com. Welcome, Jane.

 

[00:02:03] Thank you for having me, Patricia.

 

[00:02:04] Absolutely. I'm excited to unpack everything that you're doing and have done with your company, your documentary and all of your other endeavors for those of you that are new to the podcast. I will proffer up a bio on Jane to give everyone a good foundation. But prior to doing that, a quick trajectory of the line of inquiry in which this podcast will be based. Today, we will first ask Jane to briefly describe her academic and professional background that brought her to her current day endeavors. Then I want to turn to unpacking. Jane, unchain dot com. It's a news and begin animal rights Web site. I'm going to get into questions of curation, obviously, when it was launched, logistics around the launch partnership, sponsorships, things of that nature. And then I'll turn to unpacking the documentary Countdown to Year Zero, in which she directed all of the endeavors within that. And some of the response that the audiences have had with that will then turn towards our rapid fire questions. These are questions we've taken from you, our audience, who has written in and asked us to ask experts such as Jane about the various endeavors and areas of expertize that she can answer best.

 

[00:03:14] And we'll wrap everything up with advice that Jane has for the future of Vegan warriors, as well as some of her predictions as to where certain industries in the Vegan world are headed. As promised, a quick bio on Jane. Jane Velez Mitchell is the founder and editor of Jane and Jane News, a nonprofit social media news network reporting on animal rights, veganism, health and climate change. With more than 70 volunteer contributors around the world, Jane and Chanes videos are seen by millions. Jane and Jane, dot coms daily Vegan cooking show via Facebook dot com. Jane Velez Mitchell features some of the best Vegan chefs in the world. Jane Unchained has launched a new daily New Day, New Chef, a popular Vegan cooking series streaming on Amazon Prime and public television stations around the nation. She's documentary Countdown to Year Zero now on Amazon Prime. It lays out the animal agriculture's leading role in climate change and how we must transition to plant based culture or face ecological apocalypse. It won best documentary feature at the Studio City Film Festival and Jane won for Best Director documentary feature at the Culver City Film Festival. Jane Unchained has also partnered with software developer artist Wave to create plant based Nabor dot com, which is a beta testing set to become an AP later in 2020.

 

[00:04:41] This AVP, the app, will connect vegan's with the other vegans in their community and encourage the vegan economy. We Jane is has one for Genesis Award commendations for from the Humane Society of the United States for reporting on animal issues. Veggie News named Velez Mitchell. Media Maven of the Year in 2010. For six years, she hosted her own show on HLN. HLN, CNN Headline News, where she ran weekly segments on animal issues. Previously, she was a news anchor and reporter at Cakehole TV in Los Angeles and WCB s TV in New York. Her first documentary, Anita Velez Dancing through Life, won a Graciella to work in Two Thousand and one. She's the author of four books, including two New York Times best sellers, and she is active in the LGBTQ community and lives in Los Angeles with her five rescues for dogs and cats. So, Jane, I am so excited to kind of unpack everything that you're doing currently and really climb through some of your projects, possibly not all of them, because you're too prolific. But before we get to that, I'm hoping you can draw a narrative of your early academic and professional life that led you to launching Jane. And tain't.

 

[00:06:03] Well, I grew up in midtown Manhattan, directly across the street from Carnegie Hall. And my mom was from Puerto Rico, from the island of Vieques, which is part of the Puerto Rican Commonwealth. My dad was Irish American. He was an advertising executive straight out of madmen with the pipe rack in the hat and the whole outfit. And he had a ad agency on Madison Avenue. So he was truly a mad man. And they met my mother was the last of the board bills. They were both born in 1916. And my mother formed a successful  dance troupe when she came to New York from Puerto Rico called Anita Velez Dancers. They danced all around the hotels of the Caribbean, North America. And when she met my dad, because her her agent was my dad's best friend, Charles Conaway, who happened to be Jeff Conaway's dad. The the actor. Anyway, they met. They hit it off. They love to dance. They would stop the show. It was how they put it. When they started dancing, everybody else just formed a circle and watched them dance. And they were married and growing up. I actually thought I was vegetarian because when my mom was a child, she had a pet pig. She thought she had a pet pig. She thought she had a companion the way we have dogs and cats. But it turned out the pig was a food pig and was slaughtered. And my mother fainted when she came home from school and saw the carcass and she shunned meat from that point on. My dad was very meat centric when he met my mother. Corned beef and cabbage, etc.. But he changed. So we were pretty much a Pescatarian household growing up. So I went to various schools in New York. My mom wanted me to be a performer in some way, shape or form. But she was a nice stage mom. She wasn't one of those meanies. And I graduated from Rudolf Steiner, which is small private school, went to New York University, majored in broadcast journalism because I had been on television a couple of times. I'm pretty much the same person I was back then. If you look at my high school yearbook picture, it's all about animal rights and protesting. And so I have been interviewed a couple of times. And even though my initial desire was to be a syndicated columnist, I just switched it out to broadcast journalism. When I was looking at the form and said broadcast journalism, I said, OK, I'll do that. And I graduated from NYU. My first job was in Fort Myers, Florida, as a reporter anchor, a place I still love to this day. And in fact, I've gone back there to protest because a nearby county, Hendry County, Florida, had decided they wanted to become the bio farming capital of the world, which means breeding and accepting monkeys from foreign countries for laboratory experimentation. We didn't put it entirely out of business, but I think their idea of becoming the bio farming capital went out the window because we had protests, court fights, challenges. We went to town and just as a little aside, they called us radical animal rights activists. And the funny part was I was staying with this lovely lady, Madeleine Duran, an old Fort Myers right near the Thomas Edison Summer Home Museum.

 

[00:09:20] She's in her 80s. Whereas tennis shoes and actually wears a little hat with a little orange on it. So when we bought it, brought everybody, the media came out and that the commissioners were saying these were radical animal rights activists and about 40 old ladies in tennis shoes showed up from Fort Myers. I pointed to the to the senior citizens and I said, here are your radical animal rights activists, all in your homeowners from Fort Myers, Florida, who love animals. Anyway, then I went and worked in Minneapolis for a couple of years, and I worked in Philadelphia for a year and a half at WCAU. Then I got a job in New York, which was my hometown, right down the block or up the block from where I grew up. I grew up on fifty seventh and seventh, and the CBS Broadcast Center is fifty seventh between 10th and 11th. So I literally had come back home.

 

[00:10:10] That was my goal. Worked there for eight years. I was exhausted. I was the weekend anchor and a weekday reporter and you just literally go from one crime scene to the next disaster. And after about eight years of that, I was like, I want out. Friend of mine had gotten a job at Cakehole TV, which was owned by the Disney Studios. They had taken it over and they were hiring all the staff at once and they needed an anchor. They suggested me I got the job and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I moved out here to L.A., which was Oh Way is my favorite place.

 

[00:10:42] I had been to L.A. a couple of times prior with my parents once when I was 13. And I remember we had a great time and parents didn't argue with Sunny. I like this place is great. And then I had been also out to L.A. when I was in college to visit my best friend who had moved to L.A. She took me to the beach and honest to God. We sat on the beach at a spot where I look back and I said, I can't believe people get to live on the beach. And guess what? That's exactly just by total accident where I live today. So I always felt like my heart was in L.A. and when I got the job at Cakehole and we were at the Paramount Studios and I had a great parking lot, I had a parking spot on the Paramount Studios, which is. You know, everybody wants a great spot. A parking spot, the Paramount Studios. Honestly, it was it was to this day, I would say the most fun job I've ever had. It was great. You've got you'd walk to work and you'd see people dressed as Star Trek. Captains walking in the other direction. So after about eight years of that excuse me, 12 years, I was 12 years at cow and then they had imagined change.

 

[00:11:52] I was no longer an anchor. I said, OK, I'll just wait out my contract. And basically, after five minutes, a case CBS. Harvey Levin, who is now the head of TMZ, had started a show prior to that called Celebrity Justice. And he was a good friend of mine. We used to go karaoke ing together.

 

[00:12:12] That was our thing when he was a reporter at CBS that I was in a great cake. And so he says, hey, I'm starting to show celebrity justice. You want you, would you? I'm looking for reporters and I can't find any. Or something like that. I said, What about me? You said you'd be interested. Heck, yes. Everybody warned me against it. Like it's a tabloid show. You'll laugh. It'll last 13 weeks. Then you'll never get hired again because you're gonna be tabloid. I said, you know what? Life short. Harvey's the smartest guy I know. If he thinks it's a good idea, I'm going to take a shot. Suffice it to say, it lasted.

 

[00:12:49] About, oh, gosh, three or four years, I guess. Anyway, I ended up covering the Michael Jackson trial in Santa Maria, California. It was the biggest global trial of that particular time period right up there with some of the other biggies that we all know. The whole world was there. I was on Larry King Live the night of the arraignment, the night of the verdict. I was on Nancy Grace pretty much every night as the reporter. Then that that show wrapped the trial, wrapped the show wrapped. And I got asked to fill in for Nancy Grace on HLN, which I did for a while.

 

[00:13:27] And then.

 

[00:13:29] What happened was, I believe I was told that Glenn Beck, who was the host of prior to Nancy, stormed off the set or had a hissy fit of some sort and marched out you don't do on TV if you want to come back. They wanted to replace him quickly. They call me up and they said, Would you like a show? I said, yes. I was sitting right here drinking a cup of coffee, wondering what am I gonna do with the rest of my life? I wasn't free, Dad. I was just like, what's next?

 

[00:13:55] I like to let the journey of life take me, take me here, there and everywhere, like Niagara Falls anyway. I said, yes, I'd like a job. They said, OK, we'll call it ISSUES with Jane Velez-Mitchell. I said, great, because I got a lot of issues and I'm a recovering alcoholic. Twenty five years sober. I'm gay. I'm a Vegan. Perhaps the most controversial of all. Not anymore. Anyway, when I got the job, I literally they said, OK, do the show today from L.A. and come to New York. It was Friday this weekend. That's exactly what I did. Once again, the job was two blocks from where I grew up. Fifty seven and seven. This was Columbus Circle. So I moved right back in with my mother, who had a huge rent controlled apartment right across from Carnegie Hall. So I went back to my old bedroom and I was there for seven years, six years on the show. And that was that was great. It was a gift. And what I did when I would ask, see, I started to do animal rights news at Celebrity Justice. Cut me off when you think I've said enough because I could go on all day.

 

[00:15:03] Starting with the issue on HLN, CNN. I thought that that was when you started bringing in the focus on the animal rights. You started at Celebrity Justice.

 

[00:15:13] Oh, yeah, I did start at Celebrity Justice. What happened was I don't know if you've ever seen the show TMZ, but Harvey stands in the front and goes that other than all the producers have to come up with ideas or whatever, it was exactly like that. He got the idea because that's what we used to do. It got ungodly hour of like 7:00 a.m. ET Dale when I lived in Venice. Do the math. It was up early and so we'd have to have a couple of story ideas and he would go, where's the celebrity? Where's the justice? And it was stressful. So all of a sudden I went bingo, because I was an animal rights activist. At that point I was Vegan I thought I go to these great PETA galas. I love Peta. I'm going to call PETA up. They know all the celebrities. I started work with the guy, PETA, and he would get celebrities who would normally run in the other direction from us because I literally chase celebrities down the street with my own little camera and. And the publicist, by the way, this is not an ankle. This is not a police monitoring device. This is my exercise, my arm exercise anyway. Well, when we'd call, the publicist would just click what celebrity? So it was very hard to get celebrities to participate in any way, shape or form. But these celebrities who cared about animal issues were so passionate about their animal issues, they would literally push their publicist aside and talk to me about whatever their passion was. I even interviewed Robert Redford about his passion for saving the whales from the horrors of military sonar. Imagine. Hollywood royalty speaking to moi, who is with a tabloid show. But that's how much he's a great guy. Wow, what a nice person. That's how much these celebrities cared about their animal issues. So I was doing that. That's how we got a couple of Genesis awards. Then when I got the job at CNN Headline News, I said, would you mind if I did a little animal segment once a week, like really innocently because I am innocent. And they said we don't we don't see a problem with that.

 

[00:17:10] Well, maybe this was going to be pet adoptions. I did hardcore animal rights for six years every Friday. And we also introduced some of the of the. But the budding Vegan entrepreneurs like Josh Tetrick, who had just started just Mayo, and we put him on the air and a lot of these people were able to use their segment, take that copy of that segment on CNN Headline News and go out and pitch their projects. So I felt very blessed. I will always think CNN for allowing me to do that. They were true to their word. They let me do it. They never stopped me. And then after I left, I had a good run and the show wrapped up. And then I moved on to create a nonprofit that focus exclusively on animal rights and veganism.

 

[00:17:59] And is this Jane and Jane dot.com that we're speaking about now?

 

[00:18:04] It is indeed. So this is an interesting platform.

 

[00:18:07] It's done what's, I think, a most latter day survival platforms do. You've got a lot of news and you've got a lot of resources. And I'm wondering, I first want to talk about how you carried it. What is the editing process? Do you have a team of people? How do you decide which news makes it on to Jane Unchained? What do you decide gets featured? How is all of that done?

 

[00:18:31] Well, I'll tell you the genesis of it. As after I wrapped the show and I was in New York, I said, oh, I can go to protest because I was a journalist for my whole life, with the exception of a few years where I wasn't fully employed, but I was still working freelance. You can't really go and participate in protests. So actually, my girlfriend at the time was still a dear friend, Donna said. Yeah. Jane, your unshaved. You can go to protest. You can protest. And I was like, Yeah, Jane, Jane. It just had a ring to it. We laughed about it. I remember were walking down 9th Avenue and we were laughing, get Jada Jade and. So I started going to protests immediately, I noticed there was a missing component, A. It was freezing out at the time. People are rushing to get indoors, so they're not really stopping to study it. B, people are shivering and doing all these incredible things, but they're not documenting what they're doing. Remember, this is too late, 2014, 2015. So really, the idea of documenting everything hadn't become ubiquitous. And so I said, OK, here's my niche, because actually an executive at their old cable channel had said, you're obviously passionate about animals. You need to focus on that exclusively. And I said, OK. Good advice, because I always ask people for advice when I'm about to go on the next leg of my life adventure. And so I said, OK, now I found my niche, that little segment that I did every Friday. I can do it all the time. And I can I. They gave me my social media, which was very nice of them. I started putting it on Facebook. I started putting it on Twitter. And soon enough I realized there's so much happening here that I can't do it alone. And it gradually evolved into a Facebook life, which means you don't have to edit for hours and hours and hours. You can just do what I was always a live reporter or host. And we also then decided to expand it. And now we have 70 contributors around the world going live at all sorts of events, protests, VegFest conferences. And we also now have anchors who do their own shows on Facebook. And so we have animals in the law, which is Krista Krantz, a Vegan super lawyer. She's been voter super lawyer. She's Vegan from birth based in Florida. We have Lisa Carlyn who interviews doctors who are Vegan nutritionists and doctors. We had some of the top doctors. We have Lindsay Baker, who does animal rescue stories. We have Chef Babbette who run stuff I eat here in Inglewood. She's an incredible vegan chef, entrepreneur. I don't want to leave anybody out, but we would be here for an hour listening. Everybody is involved. We've got a great team of people, all of whom are working for free. This is a nonprofit and otherwise known as a money pit. I said people used to ask me before I became an OB.

 

[00:21:27] How are you going to monetize it? I was like, oh, how did they monetize the Underground Railroad?

 

[00:21:33] Then they would just look at me and turn on their heels and walk away because they couldn't handle it in our society. People don't even understand if you're doing something that's not motivated to make money unless it's a nonprofit. I realize that I was like, why does everybody keep asking me for my angle? I don't have I have an angle. Yeah. Save the world from extinction. But apparently that's not good enough. So I decided to make it a nonprofit, and I'm really glad I did. Because people need clarity on what? On what's what it's all about. And also, we have to raise funds to do this. This is not it's certainly cheaper than running one of those other networks, but it's not 100 percent cost zero. There's a lot of costs involved.

 

[00:22:16] Yeah, I think it's interesting. I do think it's some of the areas you've touched upon, too. And there's just such an incredible void.

 

[00:22:24] And speaking to, for instance, the show that you have where she's speaking with Vegan doctors, you know, I've had a ton of guests on. And one of the areas that longstanding vegans will still talk about are, you know, finding a pediatrician or an O'Bagy y and it's comfortable with one being Vegan. You know, there's this and just this. It almost seems on real like a surreal moment of lack of information with professionals that we ascribe to health, such as M.D. when it comes to diet and the Vegan nature of health and things like that, or the health nature of veganism. So. And I think those are crucial points to have and need to be continued on. What is the future of it? What is the future of Jane and Jane? What is the next one to three years, five years look like?

 

[00:23:09] Well, we're constantly pivoting and you never know what's good news or bad news. So, for example, when the quarantine happened and we had all these people all the time going live at Cubes of Truth where they hold up the signs and the monitors showing animal abuse at VegFest at all these things that were not happening. So immediately I said, oh, well, I saw within one week all of our content had dried up because except for lunch break life lunch break, like we do every single day since we started it at the advent of Facebook, like we've never missed a day. I'm talking Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year's, New Year's Eve, Fourth of July, Election Day. We never miss a day. Kind of like the post office. Ale's sleet. Snow will not stop us from our appointed rounds. And post office isn't that bad. Don't, don't don't knock the post office. We need that post office them to vote. And so that we still have going and we still continue to do. It's going to happen today. Just happened already. It's 130 here. It's twelve, thirty p.m. Pacific every single day on Facebook. Dot com slash. Jane Velez-Mitchell. So where we have almost nine hundred thousand followers so. I thought about it and I thought, well, cable news networks have anchors, right? That's what they have, a slate of anchors who talk. Let's do the same thing. We've got all these great people who are super articulate and talented. So we just reached out and sure enough, we got everybody stream yard, which is a great platform to go live on. And next thing you know well, Jed's a millionaire. You know, everybody was doing their own shows and having a great time doing it. Now, you asked a little bit about curation and editing. We are not investigative journalists. And we do have a code of conduct. Anybody can read it. You can go to Jane and Jane dot com. By the way, please sign up, get our biweekly newsletter. We are not in a position to be investigative journalists because when you're alive, look. Investigative journalism obviously takes months, even years, sometimes many years. So we're more appealing to the consumer. We do not. When you're live, you don't have an opportunity to vent and do all the things, the lawyerly things that would normally be required for an investigative story. So I tell everybody. Don't pretend to be Woodward and Bernstein, OK? We don't need that. What we do need is bringing people to these events and being their eyes and ears. So if there's a pig vigil, for example, which we go to regularly, and they still are happening with social distancing now in downtown L.A., right near downtown L.A., where it's heartbreaking to see these baby pigs six months old going into the slaughterhouse and we go wiv and we bring people there. We're not playing Woodward and Bernstein trying to make allegations of specific against any company. This is happening at slaughterhouses around the world. It's a global tragedy. What we do is try to be the eyes and ears of a consumer who might be about to pick up that package of bacon. And they see that and they go, wow, that that's really horrible. I don't want to be a part of that. I consider myself a kind person. I consider myself a loving person. I'm going to make a different choice. So we really are appealing to consumers more than anybody else. Everything we're talking about is a consumer issue. If consumers stopped eating these products, dead animals and the breast milk of cows and the menstrual period of chickens, in one week, our entire society would transform. We would stop accelerating climate change. If nobody ate animals, we'd stop destroying the rainforest. That means we'd stop destroying the habitat of wild animals. That means we'd stop participating in wildlife extinction. And because animals eat so much more than they produces food. More than 70 percent of the soy produced in America, we'd stop contributing to human world hunger. We'd stop contributing to human diseases like heart disease like that prior to Cauvin, kill one out of every four Americans and is still killing plenty of Americans, except some of them are also dying from Kolbert or and or Koban. So for all these reasons, if we just took the power back with our food choices, we could change the world. So that's why we talk to the consumers. Everything we talk about meat, dairy, pharmaceuticals is a consumer issue.

 

[00:27:58] Yeah, the purse strings hold the power. Right. And some of the change. It kind of leads us into unpacking the documentary Countdown to Year Zero.

 

[00:28:07] I will tell you as a viewer and someone who grew up in the documentary film industry and I was the most moving part for me was maybe 15 minutes in. Then you've got Dr. Salish, Rao Rayle. He said very simply in a way that I think only he can. He said, you don't try to change the corrupt current culture. You build a better one. And you bring people over to it. You know, it was then I am butchering it. That's not a direct quote. But this concept of and I really appreciate people that set up frameworks and this concept of stop not trying to fix the current broken structure, but rather developing a new format in which people can envision belonging and want to belong. Because, you know, if you can get through this life, another quote that someone on your show said, if you can get through this life, you know, living well, eating well and not hurting anyone with the same quality, why wouldn't you? You know, this concept of just constantly perpetuating something because you were born under parents that didn't know better. I mean, all of these weird forms of hereditary nature and things like that being dispelled all at once. And what I like about the documentary is that it has a very distinctly different voice than all of the really mass major heavy hitter ones out there. And I want to get into how you decided that you were going to come at that, because you have things like conspiracy, what the health, all of these, you know, game changers, big ones that came out. But you took a very much a more microscopic view with this documentary. You kind of developed the entire ethos around, you know, the attachment between veganism and the future of our planet. And and I think a lot of other documentaries had that muddled into their narrative. But they really didn't pass it all out as clearly as you did. What made you decide that you were going to take that direct narrative or did it unfold as you were filming?

 

[00:30:11] Well, we didn't really start out to make a documentary. I had made one small documentary before about my mother, Anita Velez, dancing through life because she had thousands of incredible photos of her and her dance troupe back in the heyday and the last days of vaudeville. And there were just all Averitt costumes.

 

[00:30:33] You could you couldn't you couldn't miss a documentary like that up, especially with my mother, who was incredible character and very ahead of her time, she was doing yoga. Ortiz, she was the first hyphenate. She kept her name and added my father's name. She was Anita Velez Mitchell.

 

[00:30:47] And that's why I added my mother's name to my name. I was born Jane Mitchell. But in tribute to her and also to fully express who I am, I use my mom's name as well. And so I wasn't really thinking about making a documentary. What happened was somebody asked me, well, what happened? Was I. Met, talked around. I was at the rowdy girl's sanctuary in Texas at a one of these VegFest and. This guy gets on the stage and it was a big, big grassy area. So not that many people were paying attention and there were all a bunch of food booths back there. And so I was sort of like by myself alone with my live camera getting the next speaker. And what he said just blew my mind. And I said, this is what I've been waiting to hear my whole life. He said very matter of factly, we are going to create a Vegan world and we're gonna do it by twenty, twenty six. You know, you have to have a deadline to get it accomplished. We know why we have to do it. All we need to find out is how we do it. And we I'm a systems analyst and I'm an engineer and we have methodologies for doing that. And that's how we put a man on the moon. And that's how we increased Internet speeds so rapidly. And that's how the Internet went, something when we all got our first computers. Those little weird things that look like spaceships, we didn't know how to use them. And now can we live without this for four minutes without panicking? Rapid social change can and does occur. And so he was actually instrumental in the development of the rapid acceleration of Internet speeds. I hear this guy. I'm going. He's a genius. I don't say that about very many people. I do not have a bumper sticker on the back of my car. This is my two. I will mix's are Mensa members. They are very smart, though. But this guy is a seriously. He's a genius. And so I was just taken with this idea. It's like I remember reading about the women who stop the troubles in Northern Ireland, who some trial was shot on a grassy front yard and some woman came out and said, enough, we are going to end the troubles. And, of course, all the men her. Guess what, they ended up doing it and winning a Nobel Prize. And they had said, you can never achieve something unless you can express what you want. If you can't even express what you want to achieve. How the heck are you going to achieve it? So when he said that flat out, we're gonna create a bigger world, we're gonna do it by twenty, twenty six. I was totally taken with him. So I got involved in his campaign. Climate Healer's Dawg and Vegan World. Twenty, twenty six. And then he sent out an e-mail. It said, I'm going to Costa Rica. I'm going to look at a former cattle ranch that has been reforested and we're gonna show whoever comes along. How reforesting can occur very rapidly, because that's part of what needs to happen when we eliminate animal agriculture that's eliminating most of the farmland. It's only like a fraction that's actually growing food that we eat like vegetables. It's mostly food that's fed to farm animals. So we get to reforest all that foreign land. Then that begins to sequester carbon. That will begin to reduce the temperature back to maybe 200 years ago. And we as a species will survive. Trees sequester carbon, they absorb carbon. That carbon makes the earth harder. The world's harder. So I decided to go down there with my partner at the time, Donna. We said, let's go. Let's hurry up. And then somebody who I work with very closely said, why don't you take? Because I have. I have usually issued 90 percent of stuff, but I do have two good cameras. So once you take a good camera with you and shoot some of it. So, of course, having the attic mind, I can't shoot a little bit. You know, I've got to always shoot everything. So I had my camera in their face the whole time and he was so gracious about it. It's just like nothing ruffles. And I'm shooting the people arriving at the airport and the rioting and everything, he said. Anyway, at the end of it, we actually made a like a new constitution, we created a declaration for the Vegan world and what needs to happen. And there were just, interestingly enough, twelve of us. So it was kind of like this mystical kind of thing, like here we are together and I travel at twelve of us, creating like a constitution for a new world so that the planet can survive. It felt very heavy. And I got all the debating about the Constitution or the declaration. And so when I got back, I was like, what do I do with all this? Then I went to North Carolina to speak at the Hilton Head VegFest. And that was at the time, way before. This is a couple of years, several years ago, where, you know, VegFest, I try to support small VegFest because those are the important ones to Hilton Head. Boy, that's great to have a beachhead at Hilton Head. Right. A beachhead of the organism. So I went down there, lovely people. And this editor and videographer, Jeff Adams, who lives in North Carolina, called me and he said, you know, I really feel like in North Carolina, I don't have a lot of Vegan friends and I'm feeling kind of alienated. Can I come down to Hilton Head and videotape your speech? Because I was giving a speech there. I said, sure. So we all went out to dinner afterwards and I said, Do you still feeling alienated? And you want to project? And he said, Yeah. I said, OK, I'll put you to work. Come to Vegan world. Twenty, twenty six. I'll buy your plane ticket. You go to Viðga World twenty twenty six in Arizona. Mesa, Arizona. And you film it all. I said because I'm participating in it and it's hard enough for me to do the live videos, much less do love videos and shoot a good video camera and participate. So he flew in and he shot the Vegan World twenty twenty six conference where people came from all around the world to do exactly what Dr. Rao said. We know what we have to do. We just need to know how to do it. We all created questions of what needs to be answered. He didn't call it problems. He called it questions that need to be answered in order to create a Vegan world. So we had all sorts of people there, doctors and lawyers and scientists and cryptocurrency. I mean, it was just like a huge group of maybe 200 people with a lot of varying backgrounds. We all wrote questions on the board. Then we divided it up into maybe a dozen different topics like agriculture, finance, workers, you know, those kinds of things.

 

[00:37:28] And then he creates committees and those committees will create subcommittees. And he explains. This is exactly how they do engineering projects. They create committees and subcommittees. So he's moving full steam ahead on this. Anyway, after that, he shot all that. We had pretty much what we needed for a documentary. Also, I have tons of footage that I shoot constantly and some of the best moments of the documentary or lie videos that are contributors shot Leive one. To me, one of the most emotional moments is when one of our contributors in our book or at Jane and Jane Page fastens Roach happened to see a truck filled with cows driving on the road. And she he pulled over, she pulled over and she just started videotaping these animals and talking to them. It's gut wrenching. It's just it brings tears to my eyes. You couldn't catch that if you decided to hire a crew and go out. And now we're going to look for trucks. No, these moments, the power of why video is that you capture moments that are completely spontaneous, that are not staged in any way, shape or form. The same thing with some of the visual moments. We had moments where we were seeing a pig thirsty drinking water and then turned right to some woman who's crying and talking about people need to see this. These were really emotional moments that were captured alive that we took and we added to the documentary. I mean, I think that considering we did this in one year, pretty much the whole thing. I'm used to doing things quickly. I totally respect people who take years on a project like the game changers. And it's spectacular and it's game changing. But we all have to contribute what we know how to do. I was a day of air a news reporter. I, I just I have to turn things around quickly unless I have a personality change. So we shot it. We edited it. And with one year within a year, it was on Amazon Prime.

 

[00:39:27] Well, I have to say, that is auspicious. Maybe at the very least. And at the very most, it's definitely just it's it's being very latter day.

 

[00:39:37] You know, GenZE is the non filter generation. You can't put a filter, you know, photograph up without having a 20 year old house. And I love that because they speak very much so to the mantra of my heart, you know, with this this desire for a platform for authenticity and honest rhetoric and engagement and transparency. And that, I think was part of the moving part about it, the length. None of it was confined by some of these other magistrates that controls other documentaries, even good ones in the industry. You know, this this it did feel shot by obvious different mediums and end it. You'd have to either plan that or just have it happen. And so I think it's very interesting that they narrowed the narrative, curated itself just by a year's format and and your hustle and bustle to put it together. I love it. I think it's one of the best ones out there. And I like its scope. Again, the imagery that you're talking about, you know, she is actually apologizing to the cows when she reaches through the crate and says goodbye. Those you're right. You just you can't write that. And I think a large problem with some of Dowagiac documentary filmmaking is that it's written, you know, and there is that the hypothesis re needed to head and you didn't do that. And so the narrative really does just write itself with a realistic and honest tenor. And I think that it's it's delivered in immeasurably. So I encourage everyone to get on Amazon Prime. And it's a figure, a prime member. It's free. And if not, it's pennies on the dollar.

 

[00:41:04] So what you're going to gain in education, Jane, we're running out of time, but I'm going to move to our rapid fire questions so that we honor our audience members and talking to you about you in particular. We have some very directed ones for. We've had people we reached out to people on our mailing list and we give them this some trajectory of who's coming on. And so let me give you. OK. So the number one thing that we had I tried to take. So for everyone listening, I hear you. But I'm trying to condense a bunch of your questions into one with a lot of people that wanted me to ask you directly about the KFC and the Burger King, these substitution meat alternatives that these major offenders and problem causers of the industry. Do you support the efforts that they switch because any animal saved is a good idea, or do you think that they are the propagators of the problem and still shouldn't be sponsored? How do you view that?

 

[00:42:00] Well, I think that's an age old problem. But let me say this beyond me. For example, we did an entire tour with Ethan Brown, the CEO and founder. It's right here in El Segundo. He's a vegan. He's making a completely plant based product. And he went public.

 

[00:42:18] So I don't know where the bad guy is there.

 

[00:42:21] I mean, and and as this his not competitor, his associate at another company, Impossible Foods CEO, pointed out, just because it says process doesn't mean it's bad for you. It's much better than dead animals. It doesn't have cholesterol because plants don't contain cholesterol. It doesn't have hormones, antibiotics, all these other things that animals bring with them. Also, it's a completely pure product that's untouched by human hands as it's manufactured, unlike meat, which is produced obviously in concentrated animal feeding operations. And then these animals are slaughtered in slaughterhouses that are riddled with corona virus. And where are the workers who tens of thousands of tested positive are sweating onto the meat? OK. So there's obvious benefits there as far as looking at, for example, beyond meat burger or an impossible burger at a fast food joint. The way I like to look at it and honestly, the first time I've ever been in a Burger King was for the B Army burger, the impossible whopper. That was impossible. I mix them up a little bit, but that they're my two, you know, Burger Biondi and impossible. But these are just boxes. OK, these are corporations are are not people. I mean, they can be led by a very dominant personality, but they're not people. They can't be changed. Who pays the price for the purity of us? For example, suing because a Vegan burger might have been cooked on a grill that had also grilled meat and some vegans did sue. I believe it was Burger King and the suit was thrown out. Who pays the price for that purity? Animals? Yeah. We don't want to be an exclusive club. We want the world to be so Vegan that the word Vegan doesn't even need to exist, that there needs to be a code word for Cardus and that you go into a restaurant and the menu is one or two percent Vegan. Well, I don't engage in magical thinking, just like I don't think the virus is just going to disappear. I don't think we're just going to magically one day wake up and I'll be Vegan. It's a process and we have to open the door. As Jean Bauer says, to accept everybody wherever they are on the journey. Very few of us were born Vegan. I wasn't born Vegan. So it was about learning. That doesn't mean I'm not for confrontation on for peaceful, nonviolent confrontation. In cases where it's necessary. But, guys.

 

[00:45:06] We have to get into the major institutions. If we don't get into the major institutions, we're gonna be marginalized. We can get in there and we can change those institutions. I've gotten calls from people, unnamed executives in major, major food companies who will tell me. Wow. This plant based me is coming here. Send your folks over there. There are people in these organizations that want to help. If we just demonize them and say we're not going to deal with them, they're very powerful. OK. So what we can do is convince them it's in their self-interest to convert to plant based. McDonald's could be a 100 percent Vegan company if it wanted to be. And it should become that because some very powerful companies like Woolworths no longer exist. Do they want to be the walrus? Or do they want to be the veggie girls of the future? So we know that they can convert.

 

[00:46:03] The question is consumers need to prove it to them. That means we need to support those products when they appear in those institutions that we may not love. That's my personal, Ben. OK.

 

[00:46:16] Interesting. Yeah. I wasn't sure you were gonna go that way. I like it in countdown to year zero in the documentary, as well as other tidbits of you on YouTube in places you've kind of had this rhetoric about that I find very integral and fascinating regarding the differences between generations and marketing to them and what the marketing to generations now consisting on social media means that they are no longer beholden to old stereotypes and things like that of marketing enterprises that relay horrible information.

 

[00:46:50] And we had a lot of people write in and ask, what is the best utility for social media and getting the word about veganism out there. Like, what is a good action item for the average person who just wants to help the Vegan cause?

 

[00:47:05] Here's a great action item. Every time you make a Vegan meal, take a pretty photograph of it and post it and post a hashtag. You could post boycott me. Skip meat plant based party. I love Vegan. Whatever you want, whatever you want to post, because there's all those hash tags are all circulating out there. It takes a second. You make your food, you post it. This is the most powerful tool we have. This is a network. What's a network? And that work is a production company with a distribution pipeline to an audience. Everybody who has a phone has a Facebook page and Instagram page, a tick tock page. Look at what Tabitha Brown accomplished with one tick tock video on making carrot bacon, 12 million views. A show now with the Ellen Network.

 

[00:47:57] I mean.

 

[00:47:59] I do. And by the way, I really want to urge people to watch our cooking show on Amazon Prime, New Day, New Chef. It's a new day. You can be a new chef. Please watch it. Write a review. It's very successful. Watch it with people who are not yet Vegan and recommend it to people want to go plant based. We have a lot of fun. Every time we turn on the blender, we dance.

 

[00:48:22] Epic, who who's hosting that?

 

[00:48:25] Me. And we have a lot of celebrity co-hosts. Nice. New Day, New Chef.

 

[00:48:32] On Amazon Prime. They're your best days. No question that we had we had a lot of people right in around this topic as well. And there's a lot of people looking at launching nonprofits, a lot of entrepreneurs that want to get involved in starting a nonprofit based with a Vegan tone or ideology behind it. And we had people ask, what are your top pieces of advice? And beginning off with a nonprofit with a Vegan focus.

 

[00:49:00] Well, realize right off the bat, it's a lot harder than you think. Oh, I am one of these people. I just want to go live. I wouldn't be on camera. I want to go shoot videos. Paperwork. Paperwork. Paperwork. Paperwork. And it's important. You've got to do the paperwork. So create a system. So we have people who help us and thank God. But it's complicated and it requires attention to detail and setting up a system and being organized. So this know that there's that part of it. And I would say do it. I mean, that's really the the only thing that I would say was a little bit once I got into it, like, overwhelming. But I've set up a system and I try to adhere to it and I ask for advice. So we just got a great attorney on our board. So that was wonderful because she can give us a lot of insights into how to do everything her as best as we can and as pay attention to details. But do it, do it and get started and try to figure out how to make it support itself, because there's expenses in just having a nonprofit board of directors insurance and the accounting and all the other things that you might need. So there's it's not free. Let's put it that way.

 

[00:50:29] No. What do you do you think the sponsorship or partnerships are both a collection of both. How would you advise someone head into, like, solving some of that difficult financial aspect?

 

[00:50:41] Well, that is probably the biggest issue. And I know everybody's asking right now for all the many nonprofits. It's a high class problem in the sense that, for example, 30 years ago, there were maybe three farm animal sanctuaries. I mean, there was. Farm Sanctuary. The the the biggie we have animal place that I think was founded in nineteen eighty nine of Woodstock Central. I don't wanna leave anybody out. Indro Local. There's a lot of great sanctuaries, but there were not that many 20 some years ago. Now there are like hundreds if you include myco sanctuaries and all of them need to support themselves. So we've been I've been thinking about when I do work and just associate in whatever manner, whether it's a a rescue of animals or whatever, with nonprofits that are sanctuary based. How can you make yourself self supporting?

 

[00:51:34] You have to think outside the box. You have to be creative.

 

[00:51:37] Let me say that one of the sanctuary started something called goat to meeting. I mean, sanctuaries are hurting now during the pandemic. They rely on people coming to visit. They created a goat to meeting. You can Google go to meeting where people can have a zoom and they invite a farmed animal at a sanctuary to participate. They basically put a camera in front of a farmed animal. It is a success. He had to hire more people. That's what I mean about thinking outside the box. Now, we don't want to turn those sanctuaries into petting zoos now, but there are ways to make it creative. Without that, zoos obviously need to go away. They need to either shut down or turn into sanctuaries. Zoos are designed for the better for the people. Sanctuaries are designed for the benefit of animals. But there is a way to make these sanctuaries intriguing enough, whether it's a theme or a value added in terms of maybe concerts or things like that, that where the animals are perfectly protected, they're not exploited in any way, but that they can support themselves. That's a big challenge. But I think if we think creatively, like go to meeting, it's great. I think those are the kinds of solutions we need to come up with.

 

[00:52:59] Absolutely. I agree. I had that creative thought. I hadn't even gotten into that. But sanctuary in a support is a big one. And you're right, with the pandemic, it's it's a rough situation. Well, Jane, we are out of time today, and I'm depressed because I have a billion more questions. And I went by your book, so I'm going to have to lure you back on in a few months and see if we can unpack some more of your work.

 

[00:53:20] I love it. And by the way, one last thing I'd like to say, I have a cup of coffee every morning and it's brewing good coffee and a percentage of all their profits goes to animal sanctuaries. So right there, when you have your Morning Joe, you can order for brewing. Good. They deliver right to your door. And that's how we're going to keep that Begoña me going. Every single thing we buy is a political, environmental, moral. And, you know, it's a choice that affects our world. So I just picked up the coffee and I thought I'd end with that.

 

[00:53:55] And it's absolutely true. You have a million choices towards veganism and fighting that with them. Consumerism a day. I truly believe it. Thank you so much for your time. And I appreciate all of your candor and your information.

 

[00:54:09] Thank you. It was fun, was a great conversation. Thank you for everyone listening.

 

[00:54:13] We've been speaking with Jane Velez Mitchell. She's a social media journalist, activist and author. You can find out more about everything we've spoken about as well as the documentary.

 

[00:54:23] It is countdown to year zero and find out all the information regarding her news and all of the projects in her endeavors on Jane Unchained dot com.

 

[00:54:34] Thank you so much for giving us your time today. And until we speak again next time, remember to stay safe, eat responsibly and clean and always bet on yourself. Slainte.